Book Review: Royals by Rachel Hawkins

Meet Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who’s nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her to join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond.

GENRE:

Young Adult, Contemporary

PAGES:

296 pages

PART OF A SERIES?:

1st in a planned series

RELEASE DATE:

May 1st 2018

YOU CAN FIND THE BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Meet Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who’s nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her to join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond.

While the dashing young Miles has been appointed to teach Daisy the ropes of being regal, the prince’s roguish younger brother kicks up scandal wherever he goes, and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride. The crown–and the intriguing Miles–might be trying to make Daisy into a lady…but Daisy may just rewrite the royal rule book to suit herself.

MY REVIEW

Anyone who knows me knows that I adore the royal family. I always have, ever since I was really little and I could remember Princess Diana being on screen. Then bring in books like The Princess Diaries – which I’ve been obsessed with for going on 18 years now #MichaelMoscovitzForever – and I am a sucker for royals stories. I watched both Kate and Will’s and Harry and Meghan’s weddings with such joy. So I knew that I needed to get my hands on this book. Rachel is already such a fun and engaging writer and I enjoyed her Rebel Belle series so much.

I loved this book from page one to the last. This is exactly the kind of novel I had wanted it to be. Castles and princes and princesses and snooty but fun upper class cute boys and social gaffes and so forth. Everything about it was just so damn fun and I loved it. I loved Daisy and I loved her attitude and her personality and how even when she tried so hard, she still couldn’t help but let herself out and there was something super fun and refreshing about that. I love to see a character who is so unapologetically herself and that is definitely Daisy. Even when faced with people who are of royal bloodline, she still doesn’t put up with anyone’s bullshit and it makes her such a great character.

Miles is also a super great character because you spend a good portion of the book sort of wanting to punch him in the face – or at least I did – even though you know deep down he’s super charming and smart and really, really good looking and that he and Daisy have a sort of Pride and Prejudice thing going on. I love that they didn’t have insta-love and that it took awhile for even a friendship to form between them before anything else could. It felt really genuine and it was swoonworthy because of all the incredible build up!

Lastly, I honestly just loved how fun it was. All the characters fit their roles but also had layers to them. They are more than just the stereotypes they originally seem to be and I think that’s what makes it so great. You have the scary queen, the quiet prince, the party prince with his party animal friends, the troublemaker princess, the lower class girl marrying into the royal family and so forth but they all have such layers to them and they all go through some really great character development and they each make the book so much fun. It really feels like I’m part of the celebration of a royal wedding, which is pretty much a dream come true for me so I definitely loved every moment of reading this book.

Hello! My name is Sara. I am 32 years old, Mexican-Irish, short, liberal, tattooed, loud, proudly bisexual, and a total cat lady. I love reading, writing, eating cupcakes, watching baseball, listening to music, binging all the good TV stuff and running. I live in Southern California physically but my mind is always in a fictional place. My debut novel, The Awakened, was released in December of 2015, and was my first successful NaNoWriMo novel. The sequel, The Sanctuary was published January 2017. I am currently working on a young adult fantasy called Legacy. Welcome to my blog!

**The above picture was taken in February of 2020 in Forks, Washington, the town in which Twilight takes place.**